404 Media

2026-01-14 19:46:53

Strange ‘Little Red Dots’ in Space Have a Mind-Boggling Explanation, Scientists Discover

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Astronomers think they have solved the puzzle of so-called “little red dots” in space, a population of bizarre objects at the very edge of the observable universe, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature.

The new research suggests that these dots are likely the youngest black holes we have ever glimpsed, which are “cocooned” in dense gas, a never-before-seen phenomenon that sheds light on the early evolution of the universe.

“LRDs were first spotted in 2023 in the first images made with the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Vadim Rusakov, an astronomer at the University of Manchester, in an email to 404 Media. “People have very actively studied these objects since then.”

“They are tiny, bright and red objects seen when the universe was only about 5-15 percent of its current age,” he continued. “They have puzzled astronomers: on one hand, they are too compact and massive for normal galaxies, on the other, they do not look like typical supermassive black holes, because we do not detect their usual signals, such as X-rays. And they are not just a few odd apples—almost every tenth galaxy in the early universe is an LRD.”

These baffling properties have sparked spirited debate about the nature of LRDs. Some studies have suggested they might be exotic star-studded galaxies, or weirdly overmassive black holes.

Hoping to resolve the mystery, Rusakov and his colleagues analyzed JWST observations of more than a dozen of the little red dots across longer timescales. The team confirmed that the dots are likely black holes that are enshrouded by a “cocoon” of energetic gas that can explain their novel properties.

“Our simple solution is: we think that they are massive black holes wrapped in a thick cocoon of dense gas, which makes them appear red and hides the black hole,” Rusakov said. “This idea of the cocoon was inspired by another work that predicted the presence of thick gas. We could check this idea by studying the hydrogen emission from LRDs. This showed us that the cocoon is partly ionised—meaning it has lots of free electrons. This was a surprising discovery, because by scattering light, these electrons hid most useful black hole signals from our sight and also made it appear more evolved than it actually is.”

“By looking inside, we found that these are some of the youngest black holes ever seen,” he added. “This makes them unique laboratories for understanding how black holes got started in the early universe.”
An image of little red dots from JADES 1 The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (Eisenstein et al. 2023). Image: The CEERS Survey/The JADES Survey/PRIMER Survey/Dawn JWST Archive
In other words, it’s not that these objects aren’t radiating in X-rays, it’s just that those wavelengths are largely blotted out by the gassy cocoons. Moreover, the cocoons warp light from the black holes, making them seem much more massive than they actually are, like some kind of cosmic funhouse mirror. Rusakov and his colleagues calculated that the black holes are probably a few million times as massive as the Sun, more than a hundred times smaller than expected by their appearance.

The findings are part of a wave of discoveries about the early universe primarily fueled by the unparalleled precision and sensitivity of JWST’s infrared vision.

“The first JWST observations caused several debates about how galaxies formed in the early universe, such as whether galaxies grow quicker than we thought,” Rusakov explained. “In fact, some of those initially problematic galaxies turned out to be Little Red Dots. As our study shows, they were misinterpreted as purely stellar galaxies and they are supermassive black holes instead.”

As JWST continues to expose strange new frontiers of the universe, astronomers can determine which anomalies point to novel entities and which, like the little red dots, turn out to be familiar objects going through an unfamiliar phase.

Either way, each breakthrough raises new questions. Rusakov and his colleagues may have identified the origin of the little red dots, but it remains unclear whether these young black holes grow faster than the galaxies associated with them, and what that might mean for our understanding of galactic evolution.

“LRDs show us what the black holes looked like a long time ago, and if we are lucky, they may show us how these massive black holes got started,” Rusakov said. “Just to be clear, even though they are likely the youngest black holes we ever found, they already have masses of a few million Suns.”

“This opens up the next big questions: can we find even smaller black holes with the James Webb Space Telescope? Do black holes start tiny and grow or are they born already quite big?” he added. “These exciting questions will definitely keep us busy for some time.”

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Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons - Nature

The highest-quality JWST spectra reveal that little red dots are young supermassive black holes shrouded in dense cocoons of ionized gas, where electron scattering, not Doppler motions, broadens their spectral lines.

^Nature

404 Media

2026-01-14 16:28:09

How One Guy Crowdsourced More Than 500 Dashcams for Minneapolis to Film ICE

When self-employed software engineer Nick Benson put out the call for dashcams online, he thought he’d get maybe 10 people to donate. More than 500 have shown up on his front porch in suburban Minneapolis. “The state apparatus, of course, has cameras everywhere,” Benson told 404 Media. “The citizens will also benefit from having the same cameras around to document what's going on and making sure that everything is on the up and up.”

In early January, the Trump administration sent 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area. DHS has said hundreds more are on the way. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump threatened Minnesota with a “DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION” in a Truth Social post.
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On January 7, two days after Benson put out his call for dashcams, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot legal observer Renee Good in the face. In the wake of that killing, multiple people have filmed agents threatening the lives of other observers.

Benson feels like he has to do something, so he gets dashcams into the hands of people who want them. “We need more documentation showing what these people are doing. Because I don't know—other than a compelling visual documentation of what's going on—I don't know what other tools we have until the legislative branch of our government can stand up and do its job and provide a check to all of this, because our state government can't,” he said. “So all we can do is collect evidence that this is happening and let people know about it.

Benson made it easy to buy the cameras. He set up an Amazon wishlist that has the dashcams and a 256gb memory card to go in them. People buy the equipment on Amazon and it shows up at Benson’s house. From there, he reaches out to local community organizers and gets them into the hands of people who want them. “I think more than 350 of those cameras have gone out and are already deployed in the community now,” he said. “So we got them out fast, because we all understand exactly why we need those cameras, and we appreciate that support very much.”

Benson got the idea for the dashcam wishlist when ICE told local police that one of his friends was ramming their cars. “That was completely fabricated,” Benson told me. But there was no way to prove it. It was the word of the federal government against Benson’s friend. “Dashcams are the only way we can prevent that from happening.”

As ICE spreads across cities in the US and continues to disappear and kill people, citizens have taken to the streets to put themselves between the masked agents and their targets. These community observers use a variety of tactics, including blowing whistles to let people know ICE is in the area and recording everything and posting it online.

Benson runs the website JetTip, a flight alert service for aviation enthusiasts and it was through this work he first noticed how America was changing during Trump’s second term. “I got interested in all of the ICE things by tracking the flights that were coming in to take deportees away,” he said. “In addition to keeping track of those flights that are coming and going from the airport, I've been getting looped in with the community observation part of it.”

Benson lives in Burnsville, a Minneapolis suburb with a population of 60,000. He said that even here, ICE is a constant and terrifying presence. “There's more federal agents here now than there are local police,” he said. “And we know that they're not operating with respect to the rule of law. They're conducting warrantless door to door operations right now.”

The day after Ross shot Good, Benson was dropping his kids off at school when he noticed a man running down the road. At first he thought the man was jogging. “And then half a block down the way, there was the ICE agent who was running after him,” he said. “They were just right there when I'm driving my kids to school. And it was so frustrating and violating.”

Benson put the call for cameras on January 5, but saw an uptick in donations after the Good shooting. “It was immediately clear that ICE was lying about it, and people were looking for a way to reach out and make a difference from wherever they were in their community, and that Amazon wish list was a very low friction, easy way for people to make a constructive and tangible difference,” he said. “It was more than $75,000 worth of Dash cams that have been delivered to my house here now in Burnsville.”

From there, Benson plugged into local community organizations and got the cameras into the hands of his neighbors watching ICE. “We have to teach history or someone else will teach their version of it,” Jean, one of Benson’s dashcam recipients who spoke to 404 Media on the condition of pseudonymity for her safety, said. She said that one big plus of the dashcams is that it keeps observers hands on the wheel when they’re in their car. “This was safer. A lot of people were trying to record [on their phones] while driving.”

Jean started observing and recording ICE, and organizing others to do the same, after she witnessed a raid in December. She said that ICE brought more than two dozen cars, a tactical vehicle, and dozens of armed agents. “We have to make sure people are watching,” she said. “We have to make sure we’re keeping track of our community members.”

Letty, another ICE watcher in the area, learned about the community organizations in her area after the Renee Good shooting. After getting plugged in, they told her a man named Nick was giving out dashcams. “I think they’re a great tool and beneficial to anyone who is out patrolling and observing,” she said. “Hell, I think if you’re a person of color and vulnerable to being kidnapped, I strongly believe you should have one in one in your car even if you’re not in any [observation] groups.”

Letty, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said the camera gives her a small amount of peace of mind. “But deep down I also know agents don’t care about whether you have one or not, “ she said. “I’ll never get rid of my dashcam now though. I feel like it adds another layer of safety.”

Benson isn’t done giving out cameras. “We need all of those cameras we can get to help the people who have the opportunity to stand up for what's right here and make sure that we're protected as best we can be from the federal government right now,” he said.

Benson said that the mood has changed in the neighborhood since ICE killed Renee Good. “My family were all immediately a lot more concerned about what I was doing, of course. It's hard when you see those videos of someone who was just out driving and ICE comes up to them and said, ‘Didn't you learn your lesson from the other day,” he said. "They're weaponizing this killing to prevent people from just existing in their neighborhood. Like, you can't even be near ICE while they're operating, because that means you didn't learn your lesson of them murdering someone who was there.”

Some ICE agents are reportedly using Good’s shooting as a threat: Videos captured by bystanders in the Minneapolis area this week shows agents asking if people have “learned from what just happened” while threatening them.

“It's upsetting, and it's just the next step in getting kicked in the guts by these guys,” Benson said. “I don't want to get in a situation where I've got a bunch of idiots yelling at me from outside of my car, possibly with guns drawn, and possibly giving me conflicting directions where they already have the outcome predetermined and my actions won't make any difference. That's the sort of thing that makes me really nervous: that they've already decided they need to make examples out of people.”

But Benson said he won’t give up. “We can't give up, and we can't stop doing everything we can to protect our neighbors, because we can't let them win.”

And so Benson hands out dashcams. “We’re in a situation right now where the only people that are helping are just good people, normal people, standing up and helping out the best way they can. That’s all they’ve got…what a stupid situation that we allowed this to get this far.”

Hundreds more federal agents being sent to Minneapolis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says

Noem said that more agents will arrive in the Twin Cities metro Sunday and Monday to help officers already there continue to do their work "safely."

^{Riley Moser (CBS Minnesota)}

404 Media

2026-01-14 15:29:17

Cop Used Flock to Wrongfully Accuse a Woman Then Refused to Look at Evidence That Exonerated Her, Body Camera Shows

A police officer in Colorado used evidence from Flock cameras to wrongfully accuse an innocent woman for package theft, then yelled at her on the phone when she told him she had evidence that exonerated her, according to body camera footage obtained by 404 Media.

The nightmare situation happened in September in Columbine Valley, Colorado and was first reported by The Colorado Sun, which obtained Ring camera footage from the woman, Chrisanna Elser, that showed an initial interaction with Sergeant Jamie Milliman at her home. 404 Media has obtained body camera footage of that interaction as well as footage from a phone call Milliman made to Elser after he gave her a court summons.

The incident highlights not only the extreme extent to which America’s cities and towns are surveilled, but also the fact that police believe this surveillance evidence, which in this case was used to wrongfully summons Elser to court, is infallible and bulletproof. It also shows that anyone can be caught in America’s surveillance dragnet; there is no safety in the idea that you have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide.

“You know we have cameras in that town. You can’t get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing,” Milliman told Elser and her husband at her home, referring to Flock automated license plate reader cameras in the nearby town of Bow Mar. He then told her the town’s Flock cameras had recorded her vehicle entering and leaving the town 20 times in the last month, including on Tuesday, September 22 “from 11:52 until 12:09, exactly,” he said. “Like I said, nothing gets in or out of the town without us knowing about it … I have you on camera walking up, ringing the doorbell, taking the package, and literally running away. I have you on camera doing this … I get that this is a shock to you, but I am telling you, this is a lock, 100 percent no doubt she did this.”

But Elser didn’t do it. Elser was visiting her tailor’s home for a dress fitting, and didn’t steal the package. She had her Ring camera footage from her tailor’s house and footage from her Rivian vehicle to show that she didn’t steal the package, which she told Milliman on a phone call obtained by 404 Media.

“Why don’t you come on down and look at the video?” Elser said. Milliman refused to look at the video, and said “The next person you can tell is the judge or your lawyer. This is how this works. The judge or your lawyer.”

Elser asked to speak to his supervisor.

“I am the supervisor. That is it. There is no one else to talk to,” he said. “It is on camera many times. You’ve been served a summons … I will bring all of my evidence, the many, many, many, many videos, and you can bring yours. And if a judge says you didn’t do it then you didn’t do it.”

“What are going to be the repercussions when this is proven incorrectly and you’re wasting my fucking time?” Elser’s husband told Milliman on the call.
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Elser and her husband also asked Milliman to show them the evidence he had, or to answer basic questions such as what the woman on the Flock cameras was wearing in the department’s video footage. “You’ll have to go to court for this information,” he said. “I can tell you. I am not going to tell you. I can tell you, but I am not going to tell you.”

“I’m going to go to the local police department,” Elser said.

“This is the local police department. I am the jurisdiction,” he responded.

“I want to talk to somebody today,” Elser said.

“Well, that is not going to happen. It’s not going to happen,” Milliman said.

“Yes, it can happen,” Elser said.

“I didn’t say it couldn’t happen. I said it’s not going to happen,” he said.

“No, no, it can happen,” Elser said.

“I agree it can, but it’s not going to,” he said. “You’re not talking to anybody else.”

Elser continues to explain that she has footage from her vehicle showing where she was, and that she was at her tailor’s house, not stealing a package.

“By the way, if your truck has GPS, I will simply request records from Rivian and do a court order to have those sent to me. I don’t care where your truck was. I care where you were. Your truck didn’t take the package, you did. Do you understand that? Your truck did not ring the doorbell. Your truck did not walk away with the package. You did. It doesn’t matter where the truck was. It matters where you were.”

“But you’re showing me a picture of my truck,” Elser said. “You didn’t show me a picture of me.”

Later in the conversation, Milliman says “I have been doing this for 27 years. I have probable cause because I saw you. You can laugh and giggle all you want, but I have video of you. This is going nowhere because you’re not being truthful with me. If you want to be truthful with me, you know how to get a hold of me. Other than that, you have a good rest of your day.” He then hangs up the phone.
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Milliman was disciplined with “extra training” after the incident, according to The Colorado Sun. A reprimand letter given to Milliman and obtained by The Colorado Sun noted that he exhibited “rude behavior,” and that his actions were “unprofessional and inconsistent with the standards expected of a sworn officer.” Milliman and the Columbine Valley police department did not respond to a request for comment.

Elser shared an additional voicemail with 404 Media that Milliman left her a day after the call in which he refused to look at her evidence. In this follow-up call, Milliman completely changed his tone and said he would be willing to look at her evidence: “Yesterday when we had talked, you had mentioned that you had some exonerating video and I mentioned you had my email. I would love to see it,” the voicemail says. “In the interest of justice and to make things right, I would love to go above and beyond and see anything that could possibly take away my probable cause for issuing the summons.”

Two weeks later, she sent an email to police chief Bret Cottrell containing evidence from her Rivian's cameras, her tailor's Ring camera, and a detailed timeline of events. Cottrell responded and said that they would be dropping the case: “After reviewing the evidence you have provided (nicely done btw), we have voided the summons that was issued," he wrote. "We have double checks with Jefferson County courts and the case was not yet entered into the system, therefore, there is no record on file. Thank you for getting back to us with the evidence you said you would be able to provide.”

In a phone interview, Elser told 404 Media that it feels like “they’ll talk to convicted murderers and rapists in a nicer way than they’ll talk to me about a $25 package and me saying ‘I have evidence I can show you and we can end this.’”

She said that she eventually saw video of the person taking the package.

“From a distance, I’m like, ‘kind of it was like my outfit I was wearing at the time,’ but my truck isn’t there at all, she had a shaved head, she’s much younger, had earrings on and all that,” she said. Elser said that before this experience, she was “very big on surveillance, and knowing we have cameras in our house because if something happens, I wanna know how it happens. Maybe not even a crime against me, but maybe my animals knocked something over and I wanted to know who.” She said that she has dash cams because she’d been involved in multiple hit-and-run car accidents.

“Honestly, I was one of those people that believed, ‘well, if you’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the big deal?’ But here’s a situation where I was doing absolutely nothing wrong, and I almost lost my entire career over this,” she said. “I’ve lost trust for law enforcement … I mean I love the Flock stories where they help out with saving a kid, and I look at them and go ‘yeah, you did that, but you’re not using the technology right.’”

“The overreach of this technology is the biggest concern. Just having it out there is scary, it’s too much,” she added. “It’s changed my mind immensely.”

Colorado officer who used AI cameras to falsely accuse woman of theft disciplined with extra training

Columbine Valley’s police chief said the sergeant’s demeanor was “inconsistent with the standards expected of a sworn officer"

^{Olivia Prentzel (The Colorado Sun)}

404 Media

2026-01-14 14:00:53

Podcast: The ICE Tool That Tracks Entire Neighborhoods

We start this week with Joseph’s article about Webloc, a tool ICE bought that can monitor phones in entire neighborhoods. After the break, Emanuel and Sam talk about their recent coverage of Grok. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how police inadvertently unmasked millions of their surveillance targets through a Flock redaction error.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

2:50 - First Story

23:00 - Second Story

• ⁠Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods⁠
• ⁠DHS Is Lying To You⁠
• ⁠Inside the Telegram Channel Jailbreaking Grok Over and Over Again⁠
• ⁠Masterful Gambit: Musk Attempts to Monetize Grok's Wave of Sexual Abuse Imagery⁠
• ⁠Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error

The 404 Media Podcast

Tech News Podcast · Updated Weekly · Welcome to the podcast from 404 Media where Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason catch you up on the stories we published this week. 404 Media is a journalist-owned digital media company exploring the way …

^{Apple Podcasts}

404 Media

2026-01-13 17:48:55

Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals

AI generated influencers are sharing fake images on Instagram that appear to show them having sex with celebrities like LeBron James, iShowSpeed, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. One AI influencer even shared an image of her in bed with Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro. The images are AI generated but are not disclosed as such, and funnel users to an adult content site where the AI generated influencers sell nude images.

This recent trend is the latest strategy from the growing business of monetizing AI generated porn by harvesting attention on Instagram with shocking or salacious content. As with previous schemes we’ve covered, the Instagram posts that pretend to show attractive young women in bed with celebrities are created without the celebrities’ consent and are not disclosed as being AI generated, violating two of Instagram’s policies and showing once again that Meta is unable or unwilling to reign in AI generated content on its platform.

Most of the Reels in this genre that I have seen follow a highly specific formula and started to appear around December 2025. First, we see a still image of an AI-generated influencer next to a celebrity, often in the form of a selfie with both of them looking at the camera. The text on the screen says “How it started.” Then, the video briefly cuts to another still image or videos of the AI generated influencer and the celebrity post coitus, sweaty, with tussled hair and sometimes smeared makeup. Many of these posts use the same handful of audio clips. Since Instagram allows users to browse Reels that use the same audio, clicking on one of these will reveal dozens of examples of similar Reels.

LeBron James and adult film star Johnny Sins are frequent targets of these posts, but I’ve also seen similar Reels with the likeness of Twitch streamer iShowSpeed, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, MMA fighters Jon Jones and Connor McGregor, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, and many others, far too many to name them all. The AI influencer accounts obviously don’t care whether it's believable that these fake women are actually sleeping with celebrities and will include any known person who is likely to earn engagement. Amazingly, one AI influencer applied the same formula to Venezuela’s president Maduro shortly after he was captured by the United States.

These Instagram Reels frequently have hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of views. A post from one of these AI influencers that shows her in bed with Jon Jones has has 7.7 million views. A video showing another AI influencer in a bed with iShowSpeed has 14.5 million views.

Users who stumble upon one of these videos might be inclined to click on the AI-influencer's username to check her bio and see if she has an OnlyFans account, as is the case with many adult content creators who promote their work on Instagram. What these users will find is an account bio that doesn’t disclose its AI generated, and a link to Fanvue, an OnlyFans competitor with more permissive policies around AI generated content. On Fanvue, these accounts do disclose that they are “AI-generated or enhanced,” and sell access to nude images and videos.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment, but removed some of the Reels I flagged.

Posting provocative AI generated media in order to funnel eyeballs to adult content platforms where AI generated porn can be monetized is now an established business. Sometimes, these AI influencers steal directly from real adult content creators by faceswapping themselves into their existing videos. Once in a while a new “meta” strategy for AI influencers will emerge and dominate the algorithm. For example, last year I wrote about people using AI to create influencers with down syndrome who sell nudes.

Some other video formats I’ve seen from AI influencers recently follow the formula I describe in this article, but rather than suggesting the influencer slept with a celebrity, it shows them sleeping with entire sports teams, African tribal chiefs, Walmart managers, and sharing a man with their mom.

Notably, celebrities are better equipped than adult content creators to take on AI accounts that are using their likeness without consent, and last year LeBron James, a frequent target of this latest meta, sent a cease-and-desist notice to a company that was making AI videos of him and sharing them on Instagram.

LeBron James' Lawyers Send Cease-and-Desist to AI Company Making Pregnant Videos of Him

Viral Instagram accounts making LeBron 'brainrot' videos have also been banned.

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-13 15:43:09

Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error

A handful of police departments that use Flock have unwittingly leaked details of millions of surveillance targets and a large number of active police investigations around the country because they have failed to redact license plates information in public records releases. Flock responded to this revelation by threatening a site that exposed it and by limiting the information the public can get via public records requests.

Completely unredacted Flock audit logs have been released to the public by numerous police departments and in some cases include details on millions Flock license plate searches made by thousands of police departments from around the country. The data has been turned into a searchable tool on a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com, which says it has data on more than 2.3 million license plates and tens of millions of Flock searches.

The situation highlights one of the problems with taking a commercial surveillance product and turning it into a searchable, connected database of people’s movements and of the police activity of thousands of departments nationwide. It also highlights the risks associated with relying on each and every law enforcement customer to properly and fully redact identifiable information any time someone requests public records; in this case, single mistakes by individual police departments have exposed potentially sensitive information about surveillance targets and police investigations by other departments around the country.

Flock is aware of the exposure enabled by its own product design and has tried to do damage control with its law enforcement customers by blaming “increased public records act/FOIA activity seeking by the public,” according to an email Flock sent to police obtained via public record request. Flock has threatened Cris van Pelt, the creator of HaveIBeenFlocked, by going after his web hosts and claiming that he has violated their intellectual property rights and is posting information that “poses an immediate threat to public safety and exposes law enforcement officers to danger.” In recent weeks Flock severely limited the amount of information available on its audit logs, which are designed to be a transparency tool, raising questions about how much information journalists, regulators, and government agencies will be able to get about police use of Flock cameras in the future.

“I set up HaveIBeenFlocked to show how pervasive and prevalent this monitoring is, and to show just how many searches are getting done. That information, by itself, is shocking,” van Pelt told 404 Media. “To me, as a private citizen, that’s shocking, and I think that’s kind of what Flock is trying to hide or bury.” van Pelt added that he is committed to keeping the website online.

As 404 Media has reported before, Flock’s automated license plate reader cameras are connected to local, state, and/or national “networks” of cameras. When a police officer runs a search seeking the locations of a specific license plate, they are usually not just searching cameras owned by their own jurisdiction, they are usually searching all Flock cameras in that state or in the country. Each individual search creates a record of that search on as many as 80,000 different cameras around the country.

As a compliance and transparency measure, these search records can be obtained through a “search audit,” which are essentially huge spreadsheets of specific Flock searches that contain not just the searches of local police but of all police who have ever searched that camera. Using this data, we have previously been able to report that local police are regularly giving Immigrations and Customs Enforcement side-door access to Flock cameras, and we also reported that Texas searched tens of thousands of cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion. Flock search audits have also been used to catch police who have allegedly illegally stalked people or otherwise abused the system.
An example of what search audits look like. License plate redaction done by 404 Media
Because these search audits are important tools for police transparency and accountability, they have become a popular type of public record to request for journalists, concerned citizens, privacy experts, city councils, and government regulators. In the vast majority of cases, the police departments releasing the search audit files redact the surveillance target’s license plate number. But in recent months, at least four police departments have released full Flock search audits without redacting anything at all, revealing information about a mix of more than a million individual surveillance targets, suspects, and crime victims. This means that any individual Flock customer could accidentally leak the specific search targets for millions of Flock searches nationwide; any single failure point anywhere in the country could dox the police activity and surveillance targets of other police departments elsewhere.

With the license plate information, you can determine not just what police are using Flock for, but who they are using it against. An unredacted search log file obtained by 404 Media shows more than 700,000 individual searches from June 2025 alone, performed by hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide, including hundreds of searches performed by US Border Patrol agents. They show the specific date and time of a search, the name of the officer who did the search, sometimes show the specific case number of a search, the police-stated “reason” of a search, as well as the number of Flock cameras searched. Crucially, they also show the license plate, allowing someone to connect a specific license plate and therefore person to reasons like “drug trafficking,” “fugitive,” “narc,” immigration enforcement, “homicide,” “oil and gas theft,” etc. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation found, they also expose the victims of a host of biased policing tactics and dubious searches, including hundreds of searches of “No Kings” protesters, audit log reasons that included “possible gypsy,” and the search for a woman who had a self-administered abortion.

“EFF has had this [unredacted] information but we’ve chosen not to publish it or share it because of concerns about doxing people—our policy is not to release data of surveillance victims,” Cara Gagliano, a senior staff attorney at the EFF, told me.

404 Media has also had unredacted versions of some of these files for months but has not published any of them. At first, just one or two police departments failed to do redactions. In recent weeks, however, it has become clear that many police departments are not redacting license plates; this led van Pelt to create HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website that collates many of these search audit logs and allows people to search individual license plates to determine if they have been run through the Flock system, and if so, where and when. The number of police departments who have now released fully unredacted logs has become so numerous that it can no longer be ignored, and the releases have caused Flock to drastically reduce the amount of information that can be obtained from a search audit.

Rather than simply making sure that search audits exported for public records requests do not include license plates or are redacted by default, Flock has totally overhauled how the search logs work; in a December email to police customers obtained by 404 Media, Flock said that “to protect officer safety and active investigations, Network Audit Logs will no longer include: officer names, specific plates searched, vehicle fingerprint information.”

To be clear, Flock is not turning on license plate redaction by default: It is fully withholding officer names and license plate information from the police departments themselves.

“Flock is doing their best to have it both ways where they have no responsibility and also no accountability to the communities where their cameras are placed,” Chris Gilliard, privacy expert and author of the forthcoming Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media. “Shoddy data hygiene by law enforcement is not seen as a threat or danger but accountability and transparency are.”
The letter from Cyble
In recent weeks, Flock, via a third party company called Cyble, has threatened van Pelt by filing bogus intellectual property takedown requests with Cloudflare and Hetzner, two of his web hosts. Takedown requests filed by Cyble state the site “presents a significant security risk to our client and its users. The website poses an immediate threat to public safety and exposes law enforcement officers to danger, in clear violation of our client’s users’ rights and its intellectual property rights. The website publicly and deliberately discloses extensive, sensitive information obtained from Flock and its automated license plate reader systems with the apparent intent to undermine law enforcement operations. It hosts three searchable databases that expose critical operational intelligence. Such disclosure of sensitive data substantially heightens the risk to officers and the public and necessitates urgent remedial action.”

“Please be informed that our client is a renowned company in the US and directly works with government agencies,” it continues. “In view of the above, kindly suspend the services and stop the hosting of the website at the earliest convenience.”

The EFF’s Gagliano told 404 Media that, though the EFF hasn’t published license plate information, “these takedowns are bogus. They’re blatantly misrepresenting saying this data is obtained from Flock—no, it’s data obtained from public records. There are issues around deciding whether you should make it all widely available, but it was received from public government agencies and Flock really doesn’t have much standing to be taken down.”

Cloudflare refused to take action on HaveIBeenFlocked, saying that it “found insufficient evidence of a violation,” according to an appeal email van Pelt shared with 404 Media.

Flock told 404 Media in an email “That website that is doxxing cops during active investigations. Today, we're busy working with journalists to cover the fact that our technology was pivotal in cracking open the case that found the Brown university / MIT serial killer in New England. If you'd like to report the news that matters, we'd be happy to speak to you about bringing justice to victims instead of activists trying to let murderers go free.” Cyble did not respond to a request for comment.

In a December email to police customers titled “What you Need to Know About Recent Online Disclosures,” a Flock executive said “We are aware that agencies across the country, particularly in states with broad public-records laws, are seeing increased PRA/FOIA activity seeking, among other things, LPR search logs. Recently, a third-party website began aggregating search information that has been released through these public-records processes.

We recognize that seeing investigative search activity displayed publicly can raise understandable concerns about officer safety, investigative integrity, community perception, and compliance with state law.”

The email added “To be clear: Flock has not been breached or compromised. We are CJIS compliant. Regardless, we are continuing to make changes to our Product to better protect you and your officers.”

That much is true, because in this case the sensitive material released was taxpayer-funded public records willingly released by police departments around the country.

On the HaveIBeenFlocked website, van Pelt defends his decision to run the site: “This website aggregates and reformats already-public information. This information represents a fraction of what's being shared with Flock and its government, commercial, and private partners on a daily basis,” he wrote. “Policies exist to prevent the release of this information—they are not adhered to. Laws and regulations exist to enforce the policies—they go unenforced. Police, Flock, and politicians have been ignoring these problems for years while your private movements continue to be collected, catalogued, sold and traded.”

“This website exposes the problem because, as the old saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Law enforcement and legislation are needed to address the cause of the problem, and we highly encourage you to bring this site to the attention of your legislators,” he added. “We believe mass surveillance has no place in a free society, and this data should not be collected to begin with. If it is collected, warrants should be used, lookups should be rare, and police and private parties, like Flock and HaveIBeenFlocked.com, should not be permitted to act without functional restraints or oversight.”

A police accountability advocate who has seen the unredacted search audits but asked to remain anonymous because Flock has suggested such people are attacking the company and the police told 404 Media that the situation highlights broader problems with Flock.

"It could lead one to the conclusion that if that is an unacceptable outcome for customers, maybe they shouldn't be participating in a nationwide surveillance system," they said. "The platform is designed to collect as much data as possible. They want to make that as widely accessible and searchable as possible. They need the network effect so they can continue collecting data for their AI models. So, I struggle with the company’s framing of what’s happened. That framing is an attempt to dodge accountability for what their platform is doing which is collecting data without people's (and often informed elected officials') consent."

Flock going after HaveIBeenFlocked on dubious intellectual property grounds is similar to its strategy against DeFlock, a website that hosts an open source map of ALPR locations.

In a separate December email to Jim Williams, the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed that public records were being weaponized against the company. Langley claimed the company and police are under “coordinated attack” by activists “trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us.”

“Flock is building tools to help you fight the real crime affecting communities across the country. Many activists don't like that. Let's call this what it is: Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack. The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines,” Langley wrote. “They're also trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us. Make no mistake, we're fighting this fight for you, and, I hope, with you. I remain committed to building world-class technology to help you keep your communities safe. And doing so in a transparent, secure, and privacy centric way.”

Williams responded to Langley:

“As far as your assertion that we are currently under attack, I do not believe that this is so. I have dedicated the last 41 years of my life to serving the citizens of the City of Staunton as a police officer, the last 22 as the police chief,” he wrote. “What we are seeing here is a group of local citizens who are raising concerns that we could be potentially surveilling private citizens, residents and visitors and using the data for nefarious purposes. These citizens have been exercising their rights to receive answers from me, my staff, and city officials, to include our elected leaders. ln short, it is democracy in action.”

In a press release, the Staunton called Langley’s email “unsolicited” and said “The City of Staunton wants to make it clear that the Flock Safety CEO’s narrative does not reflect the city’s values.” Staunton canceled its Flock contract days later.

Flock Threatens Open Source Developer Mapping Its Surveillance Cameras

The surveillance camera company Flock sent DeFlock a cease-and-desist. DeFlock is fighting back.

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}